Re: Labeling backup DVD+RW's
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Chris Jones wrote:
> Is there an altogether better/smarter/reliabl-er solution?
IMHO, the smartest, fastest, most reliable and cheapest solution is to
use external hard disks like usb-disks. You could reuse the same disk
for more or less unlimited rw-cycles for an average lifetime of at least
around 3 years (probably much longer, since it is not in permanent use).
By the time it dies it has quite certain been much cheaper and
environment friendly than all those dvd-rws plus the burner. Current
hard disks have capacities of more than hundreds of DVD's.
The main advantage, however, is that it is much, much faster (at least a
factor of 10 on my system). Typical data transfer rates of usb disks are
on the order of 1 GB/min. Plus you have about 100 times more space in
one place.
If you choose your backup strategy cleverly, an external hard disk can
serve as a drop-in replacement for the hard disk of your computer,
whenever that should be required.
I've read quite a few tests that showed that DVDs and CDs are not very
reliable as backup media. It gets worse if they get reused, because
their performance degrades on subsequent burn cycles.
Of course YMMV, that is just my personal experience ;-)
I've just verified, that I can label the silver aluminium housing of my
usb disk with a pencil.
Cheers,
Johannes
FWIW, I use snapshot style backups of my whole disk (OS plus data). I
can access hundreds of modifications of my data by just plugging a
single usb-disk.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
iEYEARECAAYFAklnD5kACgkQC1NzPRl9qEXSQgCcDc8QkwYf4ltqKflIzNPLQLH6
mV4AnR2/dZYfbf2/sQ1UutCz7lt7dvc5
=imAv
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Reply to: